Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Hour Comes and Now Is
John 5:24-30
24 “Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. · WEB
Two resurrections are described — one happening as he speaks, and one still in the tombs.
"He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn't come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life" John 5:24.
Three present-tense claims in one verse, and the tenses carry the theology. Has eternal life — already. Doesn't come into judgment — the trial is not pending. Has passed — a completed crossing, from one side to the other, and the verb is the one used of migrating.
What is being described is not a promise about the future but a change of location that has taken place. This is this Gospel's settled way of speaking John 3:36 John 6:47, and it rests on the definition given in the last prayer: this is eternal life, that they should know you John 17:3.
"The hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God's voice; and those who hear will live" John 5:25.
And now is is the phrase from the well John 4:23, and it settles which resurrection is meant here. The people in view are dead in the sense the whole paragraph has been using — outside life, needing to pass over — and the hour for them is not future. It is the afternoon in which he is speaking, and it is happening by a voice being heard.
"For as the Father has life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself" John 5:26.
The sentence holds two things at once and both must be kept. Life in himself is the property that distinguishes the Creator from everything created — nothing else has life except on loan. That is said of the Son. And it is said to have been given, which is this Gospel's consistent way of describing the relation without dividing it: everything the Son has is from the Father, and what he has is everything the Father has.
"He also gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man" John 5:27. The reason given is his humanity — and behind the phrase stands Daniel's figure who comes with the clouds and receives dominion Daniel 7:13–14. Judgment is exercised by one of the accused's own kind.
"Don't marvel at this, for the hour comes in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out" John 5:28–29.
And now the second resurrection, and the differences from verse twenty-five are exact. The hour comes — with no and now is attached. The subjects are not the spiritually dead but all who are in the tombs. And they come out, bodily, which is the plainest possible statement of what the resurrection is.
This is the book's own distinction, made three verses apart. One resurrection is happening now, by hearing; the other is future, from graves, and universal. Neither is a metaphor for the other.
Those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
Two resurrections at the end, and two outcomes. The criterion named is what was done — which sits oddly beside a chapter that has just grounded everything in hearing and believing, until it is read as the same test from the other side. This Gospel says both, and its own summary of the doing is given later: this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent John 6:29.
"I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is righteous, because I don't seek my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me" John 5:30.
The paragraph ends where it began, with dependence — and the reason offered for the reliability of the judgment is not competence but disinterest. A judge who wants nothing for himself is the only safe one there is.
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